File A Complaint Update

I wrote a few weeks back about filing a complaint to Speedstick because of some deodorant that left a rash when I used it. I decided to file the complaint in three different ways to see if there was any difference: by email, by phone and by regular mail. I received the last response this Saturday.

The verdict? All responded in basically the same way with a letter enclosed and the same coupons. These included a coupon for a free stick of Speedstick plus 13 more coupons worth $8.75 on Colgate-Palmolive products, several of which I will use.

In this case, what it has taught me is that I will likely email my complaints in the future unless it is a complaint that I feel I can’t express that way. Why? Time and effort. Although calling by phone allowed me to give more details to the company about the exact problem, it also took a lot longer to get all the information across. The regular mail took time basically the same time as the email, but cost me money to send the letter and the time to get a response was over a week later than the other two ways to contact the company. Therefore, email resulted in the same response for the least amount of time and effort on my part. If I wanted more than there basic response, however, I would certainly call.

I haven’t done any customer complaints in quite some time, but I’m still a believer that written correspondence is the most effective form of communication when dealing with a corporation. Even if it does cost a stamp, the letter seems more substantial than an e-mail. The last letter I wrote to a corp was United Online, parent company of NetZero. When I called NetZero to cancel my account, they played a little game with me, stating the first account rep said that I had wanted to put my account on hold for 2 months. Actually, it was the second account rep who I talked to that stated I must write United Online a letter to have my account canceled and get a refund.
The most important thing to do when dealing with a corporation though and talking with representatives is to always get their names and rep numbers, and write down exactly what was said on the phone.

I cancelled Netzero on 4/10/07. But there’s a trick to cancelling being played on the consumers. They politely inform you of 2-mo/free high speed service regardless of your cancellation as a backu-up to any complications one may have with the new ISP provider. Should you not inform them not to continue the so called free service, your credit card is charged for failing to drop the free service “you never asked for!” Whas-Up?

Then a game is played on the telephone back and forth from cust-service monkey’s in India and the US. Stating how sorry they are we’re having such problems. They’ll correct the problem right away then your transfered to another monkey to start the process all over again….

Who’s held accountable for this insanity? Who thinks up this crap? How does the consumer fight back?

I called 1-800-netzero and cancelled my Net Zero account starting at 11:40p on 10/2/07 and when we finished it was 12:05a on 10/3/07. My VISA was charged $14.95 on 10/3/07 for a full month of Hi-Speed. I called netzero on 10/24/07 when I received my monthly VISA account and they said they could not refund my $i4.95 because it was cancelled on the day of billing per a so called supervisor off line. I SAID THAT I WAS CHARGE A FULL MONTH after cancellation. The Net Zero representative had no comment.